"For me, the didjeridu is the sound of the earth's core pulsing serenely, and expression of life force." Lines like that and track titles like "the Chi stirs" might tempt the cynical old birds amongst you to reach for the bourbon and packet of smokes, but the breathtaking beauty of what Annea Lockwood does with the venerable instruments, along with conch shells, trombones, oboe, English horn, clarinets and percussion will have you putting them back on the shelf again and getting down in a Lotus position. Evolving organically from a partially improvised piece entitled Nautilus which the composer realised in 1989 with Art Baron and N. Scott Robinson, Thousand Year Dreaming is a 43-minute exploration of the virtuosity of the top-notch performers involved. In addition to Lockwood, Baron and Robinson, there's Libby Van Cleve (oboe and English horn, absolutely exquisite), Jon Gibson (didjeridu here), J.D. Parran (clarinets), Peter Zummo (trombone and didjeridu) and percussionists Michael Pugliese and Charles Wood. Quite how the piece was notated (though it is apparently fully scored apart from two improvised sections), or how Lockwood transmitted her ideas to the musicians isn't made clear in the notes, but it hardly matters: the timing is extraordinary, the sense of space masterly. The acoustic beats of the conch shells' microtonal inflections might recall Alvin Lucier, but the work's openness to melody – check out those trombones soaring through the harmonic series on "floating in mid-air"! – takes it out of the domain of Lucier's poetic experimentalism and situates it further to the East. Originally released on What Next back in 1993, and long out of print, its return to circulation is cause for celebration indeed. So maybe I'll reach for that bottle after all.
Filling up the CD is floating world, a three-part assemblage of field recordings from all over the world, from the wilds of Cape Kidnappers in New Zealand to the New York Public Library Reading Room, made by Maggi Payne, David Dunn, Larry Austin, Chris Mann, Sorrel Hays, Steve Peters, Ruth Anderson, John Cousins, Philip Dadson, Warren Burt and Brenda Hutchinson and on permanent loan to Lockwood, who has edited them together with consummate skill and terrific attention to detail.–DW, Paris Transatlantic